Writing

I got into Veronica Mars late, mainly because I heard Joss Whedon was a fan 1

Veronica Mars the series combined witty characters, long-running and intertwined mysteries, with a healthy sense of humor, noir and movie references. The first season was great, second was good, third had a lot of potential but dropped season-long mysteries for two shorter ones and a bunch of standalones (at network insistence).

Then it was cancelled.

The funny thing was, it turned out that the show's Marshmallow fans had as much dedication as the Browncoats, keeping the spirit alive and, ultimately, thanks to equal enthusiasm from the creators and a Kickstarter campaign, getting a movie made.

Veronica Mars the movie managed to re-capture lighting in the bottle, getting the elements that made the series great and squeezing it into one hour and forty-seven minutes. (although I have two quibbles - see below).

Tags:

It's been a while since I updated, mainly because of a concurrence of busy times in my day job and two community/voluntary activities I'm involved in, which have distracted me from writing. What time I've had free for writing has been focused on the first draft of Black Storm, which is coming along nicely, rather than blogging.

So today I'll offer an observation on technology/geek toys and a single review:

Tags:

I've been busy reading and writing lately, but haven't caught up with my reviews, so here's a bunch of recent reads, most of which I loved.

Or She Dies, by Gregg Hurwitz, 5 stars
Very clever, taut thriller about Patrick Davis, a fired screenwriter who finds himself and his wife threatened by surveillance DVDs and cryptic e-mails, then begins to follow his tormentors' instructions and goes deeper into a conspiracy that sets him up as both a murderer and victim.

Tags:

I read a lot of novels for fun, but also dissect them in the back of my mind, thinking about the author's craft: what works, what doesn't, why he or she has made the choices they have and whether I can learn anything for my own writing.

I've just finished re-reading some books by Matthew Reilly, an author that I like in many respects, but find frustrating in others. I first discovered Reilly when he published Area 7 , finding it to be a fun read with some aspects that bothered me a little, then gradually collected his whole set.

There's a lot to like about Reilly. He self-published Contest, caught the attention of mainstream publisher and went onto international success. He was an earlier adventurer in the e-book world, uploading free .pdfs of Hover Car Racer to his site way back in 2004. His style builds on the science-based techno-thrillers of Michael Crichton, military tactics of Tom Clancy, history/mystery of Dan Brown, secret agent gadgets of James Bond (more the movies than the Fleming novels) and shear action/adventure of Lucas & Spielberg's Indiana Jones.

But, as I've noted before, if Stephen King is the (self-described) "literary equivalent of a Big Mac and fries", then I doubt Reilly would object if I called him the literary equivalent of Jerry Bruckheimer or Michael Bay.